Putting the contentious issue of secondary suites to a plebiscite is a sure way of wasting up to $1 million. City council needs to resolve the issue on its own. That's why we elected them.

This council showed with water fluoridation that it is capable of tackling tough issues. Holding a plebiscite on secondary suites will solve nothing.

Because it arises from an aldermanic motion rather than a citizen's initiative, it will not be binding on council. Sure, it would give them direction, but that they already have, in spades.

Many community associations oppose making secondary suites legal citywide. The Calgary Homeless Foundation and the Calgary Chamber of Commerce have come out in favour of secondary suites in all neighbourhoods. So have the Calgary Real Estate Board, the Calgary region of the Canadian Home Builders' Association, the Urban Development Institute and other business organizations.

City bureaucrats previously studied the issue and also recommended that council allow suites in all areas of the city. Six years ago, provincial MLAs weighed in with a review committee that concluded: "The overwhelming response in our consultations was that secondary suites would provide safe and affordable housing, and is long overdue as a legal housing option."

Council is now looking at the cost implications of a plebiscite after a public vote was recommended by Ald. John Mar to potentially nudge aldermen from their entrenched positions. He and Ald. Shane Keating recused themselves from voting in March about legalizing secondary suites citywide due to a conflict of interest (both were building suites on their properties). The March vote failed seven to six, but council voted in April to allow secondary suites in all new neighbourhoods. That decision removed uncertainty for people buying in new subdivisions, but oddly, creates more density further from the core.

The nagging issue of suites in existing neighbourhoods, where they are more effective due to proximity to LRT, remains unresolved. There are an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 illegal and potentially dangerous units throughout the city, with many renters reluctant to complain about substandard housing.

City-ordered plebiscites should be used sparingly. Direct democracy has significant drawbacks, as recently noted by James Fishkin, director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University.

"Voters participate, but often exercising about as much deliberation as they might when casting a vote on American Idol," he wrote on the website of the New America Foundation.

Instead, he favours deliberative polling, where a representative cross-section of citizens are asked to deliberate on an issue and then vote on it. This is different from broad surveys, which Mayor Naheed Nenshi says already indicate widespread support for citywide suites.

A reasonable date for a plebiscite would be the fall of 2013 as a ballot question during the next municipal election. Calgarians deserve a solution long before that.
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